Thursday, 13 August 2015

Action Comics #43 - Review

Words: Greg Pak

Art: Aaron Kuder

Colours: Tomeu Morey

Letters: Steve Wands

ALWAYS SPOILERS

It’s fitting that my blogging about comics should begin with a piece about the latest issue of
a title that (for better or worse) changed the medium as we know it, especially
as the story within is so 'of the moment'. With Action Comics #43, Greg Pak and
Aaron Kuder present the third issue in an arc that has been really compelling up
till now, as Superman squares off against a group of wholly unsympathetic riot
cops looking to beat down a group of assembled ordinary Joes, who’ve peacefully
gathered for a pro-Superman rally in Clark Kent’s neighbourhood.

It’s an interesting hook, bearing in mind contemporary US news
events, which puts the Man of Steel in his element as an optimistic and inspirational figure and defender of the downtrodden. He
may be shorn of his immense power (more on that in a bit) and decked out in
jeans and an S-logo t-shirt following his identity having been leaked (more on
that in a bit), but this is Superman at his purest: as a form of wish fulfilment
and embodiment of ‘goodness’. And it’s been a really fun couple of issues so
far.

To briefly
recap, issue #42 ended with a genuinely suspenseful cliffhanger moment as, after taking
a lot of punches with stoic, good grace befitting the last son of Krypton,
Superman finally relented, punching the officer in charge. Of course, this is exactly what
the bad guy was hoping for and set up some interesting questions, namely: how is Superman going
to deal with the fallout of having assaulted a cop? Especially having provided an excuse for a squad of riot police to beat the crap out of his
assembled friends and neighbours. How on earth was he (being Superman the character and Pak as writer) going to resolve this one?

Somewhat
anti-climatically this is all resolved by page two of the issue. It begins with a great opening splash,
in which Superman realises exactly what he’s done (“Me... punching a cop? In anger? This isn’t what Superman’s all about. This is bad...” ) which further raises tension for the
reader, only for Pak and Kuder to reveal that the officer in question – Sergeant Binghamton
– is a more literal monster. He's in fact one of the Shadows, a mysterious new enemy currently being
established over in the pages of Gene Luen Lang and John Romita, Jr’s Superman. This has the effect of instantly letting Superman off the hook and also saves the assembled innocents as the riot cops turn their capacity for violence upon their unmasked sergeant.

In a great little character moment, Superman's answer to the cop's "how'd you know. Superman?" is a straightforward and completely honest "I didn't".

This is potentially a
problem, for the issue and potentially the whole arc, because the stakes were
raised somewhere higher than “will Superman beat the monster?” to somewhere
infinitely more interesting. Perhaps there was internal (and quite understandable) reluctance
at DC comics to have Clark Kent punch a cop, so it makes sense that Pak and Kuder would go the route of revealing Binghamton as an even less ambiguous monster, eligible for
guilt-free punching. Yet it might have been more interesting a problem for Superman
if nobody else around had seen the officer’s true nature, with our hero still
having to face the consequences of that act with all their teased implications.

Which isn't
to say the situation blows over without any moral consequence. Pak is smart enough to have
our hero wrestle with what he intended to
do - which was to punch a cop in the face in anger - noting his sense of “shame
and relief” after the fact. Still the story loses a lot of the momentum and
sense of curiosity which had been built up so skilfully in the preceding
chapters.

Yet even if it doesn't continue on the
trajectory I'd have found most immediately rewarding, over the rest
of the issue it becomes clear that Pak wasn't necessarily interested in telling “Superman
vs. Police Brutality” so much as a more optimistic and constructive tale about people overcoming
their differences and banding together for a common good. It's about a community healing rather than the easy thrills one might derive from Clark punching back – even if the characters are bound by genre
convention to do this by fighting somebody else (monsters!). (Sidenote: a superhero
title called Action Comics would make an unlikely forum for a tale of peace and anti-violence after all.)

I love Greg 'The Incredible Hercules' Pak's writing as a rule, but this attempt at making Jimmy Olsen seem cool/relevant made me laugh and it's a perfect encapsulation of the 'hip' DC YOU branding. #auto-uploading

In the end the comic is smarter for taking this approach than I had initially given credit on reading that second page reveal. As the police and protesters aligning against Shadow-possessed government officials it suggests a conflict between Superman and the institutional causes of systemic inequality rather than just the foot soldiers themselves. As the "to be continued" text sums up nicely, with a playful hokeyness that's visible throughout the book, "Does Superman Know You Can't Beat City Hall?"

But putting current affairs and specific story beats to one side, where this story arc has really shone so far is in its deceptive simplicity and accessibility.

This brings
me back round to Superman’s vague, undefined loss of a portion of his power and
the aforementioned detail that his secret identity has been leaked to the
public, apparently putting him out of favour with elements of the population
and government*. That all sounds like business that would intimidate or alienate
a new reader, yet happily this isn't the case at all.

There's no convincing some people, apparently.

I jumped
onto this series with #41, at the start of this arc (which more broadly forms
part of a nominal crossover event called “Truth” taking place over all the
Superman books), and it’s written in such a way that makes it very easy to just
roll with this status quo. It’s quite amazing in the modern era, but this
is genuinely an arc you could hand to somebody completely new to superhero
comics and they'd get what’s going on. Better still I think #43 pulls the same
feat even as it comes in the middle of an arc. Everything you need to know to
enjoy this comic is presented in the pages of this comic and is supported by coherent storytelling. That shouldn’t be
such a big deal but it’s far from the norm in comics.

If you'll indulge a little anecdotal case study to support this point: my wife is reading and enjoying this arc, with no prior Superman
knowledge (save the general pop culture kind) and zero investment in the
broader DC universe whatsoever. This is something even the very best writers at
“the big two” find extremely difficult to do and it’s something more comics
need to do if they're ever going to attract significant numbers of new readers
instead of just selling comics to nerds who already like comics (like this
writer). Which I don’t mention as a business problem (although it is) so much
as an inclusivity issue. Ultimately, a wider range of people reading comics will translate into a wider range of people writing comics.

So if you
know somebody who’s into the movies or TV shows (or the cosplay or the t-shirts
or the video games or the action figures) but doesn't know where and how to
jump into the books themselves (which was me circa 2011), this issue and this story form a
brilliant jumping on point.

It’s smartly
written and purely enjoyable - easily one of the best superhero books coming
out at the moment.

*There's potentially something about the current immigration debate here but I won't go into it for fear of using up all my SJW tokens in my first comic review.

About the blogger...

A former freelance film journalist based in Brighton, I have written contributions to The Daily Telegraph and several websites, provided occasional analysis for BBC Radio Sussex and Radio Reverb, and recently I've been involved with several volumes published by Intellect Books.
I've also written about video games for GamesIndustry.biz.
I can be "followed" on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/BeamesOnFilm